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15 lessons learned
migrating SAP
to the cloud
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“Moving to the
technology like your SAP implementation,
you expect and even desire change. You’re
us money, but
to HANA-only support in 2025, or you’re
looking for ways to lower the costs and
this is really
improve the performance of your SAP
deployment. Whether you’re part of a one
about becoming
million or a one billion dollar business,
managing change with your traditional
Mike Taylor
Manager of the Microsoft SAP program in Core
Services Engineering and Operations
Chapter 01 Moving SAP to the cloud 6
Re-host Rebuild
‘Lift and shift’ your Rebuild your solution using
current solutions to VMs cloud-native technologies to
in the cloud. get the most from the cloud.
Refactor Replace
Make minimal changes Replace portions of your
to your solution so it works current solution with SaaS.
in the cloud.
Re-architect
Change how your
solution works to
optimise it for the cloud.
Chapter 03 Move your SAP to the cloud 14
The team used a lift-and-shift (rehost) processes. It was also a great way to spot
strategy to take servers from the any issues in production early on.
on-premises environment and
As a result of the migration, the team
re-create them as Azure VMs that
realised that developers need help as they
had roughly the same available resources
refactor, rearchitect and rebuild their apps
and configurations. Because we run
to integrate SAP with Azure services. This
multiple sandbox, test, development and
is why we created the SAP ABAP SDK for
production environments, the team used
Azure, which simplifies SAP integration,
the horizontal strategy on the sandbox
and the SAP Web Services Platform for
environment as a series of test cases
Azure, which enables partner applications
or mini pilot migrations. It was perfect
to integrate with SAP in a consistent and
for initial experimentation. We used the
efficient way.
vertical strategy to adjust their internal
Lessons learned
Migrating our SAP infrastructure helped Understand migration strategies and
us to learn a few things: how they can be best applied to your
environment.
Consider moving low-risk systems
to the cloud with the vertical strategy Understanding what to move and when to
right away. move it is a big part of moving SAP to Azure.
The horizontal and vertical strategies
When we started, we planned to use the
discussed in the first resource provided
horizontal strategy and then the vertical
below give you practical, business-friendly
strategy. But because one of our end-to-end
guidance on migration strategies.
systems was low risk, we used it as a test case
for the vertical strategy to get experience Predict known business events.
with a production environment in Azure. Don’t move systems when they’re highly
Consider building new systems critical. We schedule around events like
in the cloud from the start. product releases, quarterly financial
reporting and big projects that go live
When we built a new system, we weren’t
in the production environment.
sure whether to put it on-premises and
then move it or to build it in Azure from For a closer look, see Strategies for
the get-go. It was low business impact, migrating SAP systems to Microsoft Azure
so we built it in Azure. We saved money and Streamlining business processes with
and learned about cluster set-ups and SAP connectors and Azure services.
production environments in Azure.
04
Make the
most of SAP
in the cloud
Chapter 04 Make the most of SAP in the cloud 18
Once you’ve made the move to the cloud, size your SAP workloads in Azure, so you
you’ll want to optimise your SAP cloud pay only for what you need, when you need
environment to gain business and cost it. This reduces the total cost of ownership
efficiencies. of unused hardware and ongoing server
maintenance and gives you the agility
You’d typically size on-premises servers
to size your SAP workloads for now and
and storage infrastructure for the next
easily change your set-up as needed
three to five years, based on the expected
to handle future requirements.
maximum use and workload during the
lifespan of the asset. But often the full High availability and scalability.
capacity of the hardware isn’t used outside For scalability and high availability of the
of peak periods – or isn’t needed at all. SAP application layer, you can deploy and
Maintaining these on-premises systems assign multiple SAP app instances to SAP
is costly. redundancy features like logon groups and
batch server groups. You can configure
The cloud gives you more flexibility. For
these app instances on different virtual
example, the optimisation capabilities of
machines in Azure for high availability. SAP
Azure empower you to combat infrastructure
automatically dispatches the workload
underutilisation and overprovisioning. This
to multiple instances per the group
makes it possible for you to quickly and
definitions. If an instance isn’t available,
easily scale your SAP systems up or down
business processes can still run via other
for current and short-term needs, not for
SAP app instances that are part of the
maximum load over the next three to five
same group.
years. This also enables you to optimise
continuously. As your needs change, you can Rolling maintenance.
reoptimise your environment based on your The scale-out logic of SAP app instances
current needs – not yesterday’s. can be used for rolling maintenance. You
Here are some other examples of cloud can remove one virtual machine (and any
optimisation capabilities you can use SAP instances running on it) from the SAP
to keep your SAP cloud environment system for maintenance activities without
optimised: affecting production. After you finish your
work, you can add the virtual machine
Cost Management to decrease cost and back, and the SAP system automatically
increase agility. uses the instance again.
You can use capacity management tools
like Azure Cost Management to help you
Chapter 04 Make the most of SAP in the cloud 19
How we optimise
SAP in the cloud
Like you, we want our SAP environment Consider optimising your SAP
to be agile, efficient and able to grow environment before and after
and change with our business. This moving to Azure.
requires monitoring the environment and You can optimise your environment
optimising it to: before migrating by ensuring that retired
Increase cost savings by using our Azure systems aren’t migrated, that your SAP
infrastructure more efficiently. infrastructure inventory is accurate and that
your disaster recovery plan is tested and
Create a more agile, scalable and
in place. You don’t want to waste migration
flexible SAP on Azure solution.
time on systems or data that you don’t
By optimising SAP on Azure, the CSEO team need.
positioned our SAP environment to grow
Design for high availability in your
and change with our business needs. It’s
production systems with Windows Server
now leading our digital transformation and
Failover Clustering, SQL Server Always
empowering everyone in our organisation
On and SAP features like logon groups,
to achieve more. Put simply – Azure makes
remote function call groups and batch
our SAP solution better.
server groups.
Single sign-on.
Seamlessly access all SAP applications with
a single credential by using Azure Active
Directory single sign-on integration.
Chapter 05 Secure and manage SAP in the cloud 22
Learning and
Electronic
Shared SAP Succession
HR Recruiting
System ECC Success
EREC
Factors
OEM
Services
Commerce Services
Billing CC
OER
Customer Expense
Enterprise Project Mgmt Mgmt
Services CPM Concur
Adobe
Solution Business
SAP Document
Manager Objects
Platform Services
SOLMAN BOBJ/DS
ADS
5. Consider moving low-risk systems to Azure with the vertical strategy right away.
In evaluating when to use a vertical strategy, keep in mind that a low-risk end-to-end system
might be a good candidate for testing this strategy and gaining experience with a production
environment in Azure.
10. Consider optimising your SAP environment before and after moving to Azure.
You can optimise your environment before migrating by ensuring that retired systems aren’t
migrated, that your SAP infrastructure inventory is accurate and that your disaster recovery
plan is tested and in place. You don’t want to waste migration time on systems or data that
you don’t need.
11. Design for high availability in your production systems with Windows Server Failover
Clustering, SQL Server Always On and SAP features like logon groups, remote function call
groups and batch server groups.
12. Snooze so you don’t lose. Slash your costs by taking advantage of one of the cloud’s
best benefits: snooze your usage of Azure when your teams are out of the office on nights
and weekends.
15. Capture all application and data legal requirements during planning.
Because complying with legal requirements for data safety and security can be complicated,
it’s a good idea to work with the stakeholders and data owners for each application to capture
all corporate and legal compliance needs. Plan for this up front.
Checklist Lessons learned on moving SAP to the 29
cloud
Next Steps
Learn more about SAP on Azure
Contact us